"A tightly-packed two-volume edition containing everything you could possibly want to know about Jean Gabin and his films...Charles Zigman writes in a light and readable style and has aimed the book at everyone from the uninitiated to the confirmed fan. No book on Jean Gabin, even in French, has covered so much ground."
-- French News, France's English-Language Newspaper, October 17, 2008
"World's Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 Films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin" is a look at one of the best film actors the world has ever known [whose career] spanned nearly fifty years, and who was a war hero, husband, father, and farmer on top of all that. Covering his life and career in completion, author Charles Zigman introduces him to the English speaking world, where he holds quite the cult following... and leaves no detail to the reader's imagination. "World's Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 Films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin" is a must for any serious collection dedicated to film and cinema.
-- James A Cox, Midwest Book Review , June 5, 2008
What can one say about French superstar Jean Gabin? If he's not the "world's coolest movie star" as proclaimed by the title of Charles Zigman's entertaining and endlessly illuminating new biography of the actor (in two mammoth volumes!), he has to be up there in at least the Top 5. Gabin's appeal, like that of Bogart, his American counterpart, relies on a quiet, unpretentious toughness, an unassailable integrity, a cynical -- but not nasty -- sense of humor and a classy, non-judgmental wisdom about people and the ways of the world. He projects his persona effortlessly, but forcefully, from the screen, the world-weariness and resigned, wisecracking fatalism of a wide-ranging array of characters, from tragic drifter to insightful patriarch.
-- Chris D.,
Director of Programming, The American Cinematheque
Author of Outlaw Masters of Japanese Film, August 12, 2008
"This is probably the most important publication in the world, the most complete, about this well-known French actor."
-- Eric Le Roy,
Director of CNC/Ministry of Culture Film Archives,
Paris.
August 5, 2008. |
